Matchstick Sculptures by David Mach

Scottish sculptor and installation artist David Mach’s artistic style is based on assemblages of common household objects including newspapers, car tires, matchsticks and coat hangers. Many of his installations are temporary and constructed in public spaces. For example, one of his early sculptures Adding Fuel to the Fire, was assembled from an old truck and several cars surrounded by about 100 tons of magazines. Another sculpture exhibited in London in 1983 consisted of some 6000 car tires arranged as a lifesize replica of a Polaris submarine.

In the early 1980s Mach started to create smaller-scale works assembled using thousands of matchsticks pressed into a clay mold to form the likeness of Charlie Chaplin, Marilyn Monroe, Mahatma Gandhi and Ben Kingsley, among others. Mach uses Japanese matchsticks because their heads come in all sorts of different colors. After accidentally setting fire to one of these heads, Mach now often ignites his match pieces as a form of performance art.